Toffee
by Tynesider
Summary: Elora cannot shake off her problems, but she has a vice to take the pain away. Unfortunately that vice is about to turn against her. OneShot, rated for content.


In times of emotional distress Elora always found herself reaching for a box of toffees. It wasn't her favourite vice by any means, but it was an inexpensive way of clearing the blues that dogged her on a semi-regular basis. She had always been fond of toffee as a confection – not only did it taste great but it buried itself into your teeth so you could still taste its sweetness long after the candy had gone, and this long-lasting taste of sugar was what cheered her up when her day wasn't going entirely to plan. Most of her issues stemmed from work and other trivial things, but today's issue was much more serious, and also much more purple.

She had turned over her entire house to find that precious box. As charitable as she was she would never share her beloved toffees with anyone, not even her closest friends, and as a result she hid it in obscure locations to avoid thieving fingers. A sound plan, only nine times out of ten the box was so well hidden she forgot where it was, and bearing in mind she only ever wanted it when she was in a bad mood it led to a rage that could only be described as volcanic.

"Urgh!" she roared, tossing upholstery around as she hunted for the elusive box, "Where are you, you stupid thing?"

She had been at this for half an hour, and now her front room was looking like a natural disaster in a furniture shop. Cushions and books covering the floor; drawers torn free from their benches and cupboards bare except for the occasional broken glass, a by-product of Elora's ruthless search. "Come on!" she shouted to no-one in particular as she dived into her cupboard, shoving aside shirts and gowns to rummage among the selection of empty boxes she kept there. It was here that her search drew to a close, as wedged between two of the empty boxes she saw the familiar sight of box decorated like an Ace of Spades. "Yes!" she said triumphantly, yanking the desired box free from the pile and shutting the cupboard door before they could spill out and cause yet more mess. Not that the mess particularly bothered her – all that was important now was her toffees.

She sat down on the edge of her bed and opened the box, and inside she found twelve of her treasured sweets, bound in striped paper wrappers and smelling as fragrant as ever. Giggling in giddy delirium, she plucked one out and slowly began to unwrap it, taking care not to tear the pretty paper. With the twists unravelled she levered the paper away from the toffee, and what she saw wiped the grin clean off her face.

The toffee was purple.

Elora blinked a couple of times to check if her eyes had suddenly decided to malfunction, but the toffee remained purple no matter how long she stared at it. She slowly began to sweat: this was bad, seeing purple would only remind her of her troubles, and her brain didn't disappoint. Her mind was flooded by the symbolic meaning of purple and the memory of why she had been so desperate to find her toffees in the first place, the memory that had placed so much weight on her. With those two thoughts taking pride of place in her head her brain took it as a cue to pose the questions to her again.

"_Why?_" her mind whined, "_Why did you let him go? Why didn't you tell him? Why did you let him run away, never to return again?_"

"Shut up!" she shouted at herself, focusing her eyes on the window in an attempt to quell her head, "I didn't need to tell him anything!"

"_Then why are you reaching for your toffees?_" her head questioned, knowing that she couldn't counter that. Elora knew this too, so in response she pulled the toffee out of the wrapper and held it to her lips. Alright, the toffee had changed but it was still toffee, and it would rid her of her discomfort no matter what form it took.

She placed it on her tongue and chewed, and as she did so she heard her mind sigh.

"_Oh dear, that was a silly thing to do._"

"No it wasn't," Elora thought back, "It'll get rid of you and your stupid memories."

"_Oh, my dear girl, that's the least of your problems now._"

"What do you mean?"

"_I don't need to explain, once you try and raise your teeth to have another bite you'll see what I mean,_" and with that Elora felt her mind clear. She sat still, her teeth still clamped together with the toffee bisected between them. Was it just her or had she just had a discussion with her own mind? Great, now she was going crazy, but at least her craziness had left her alone to enjoy her toffee in peace. Finally finding herself in a position to relax, she went to raise her mouth to take another blissful bite, but her teeth didn't budge.

She stopped, small tendrils of fear growing in her stomach. She tried again to raise her mouth, but the toffee was holding it shut like cement. She let out a grunt of despair and tried again, yielding the same unwanted result. Suddenly her previous problem didn't seem so pressing, and as she tried over and over again to free her teeth from the candy her panic grew wilder. She slid her fingers between her teeth and tried to lever them apart, but it was clear a much greater force would be needed to separate them. Pausing for a moment to brace herself, she opened her jaw with the greatest force she could muster, and it worked. But not in the way she had intended.

She screamed as she felt two of her teeth rip free from her gum. Clutching her mouth, she staggered out of her room, tripping over cushions and books as well as her own feet as fear ruined her balance. She shuffled into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. It was a horrific sight – teary eyes, face taut with fear and blood dribbling out of her mouth, but what was so much worse was the two teeth sticking out of the toffee, which was still stuck in her mouth. She began to cry openly, her sobs spitting blood into the sink.

"_Told you,_" her head whispered.

"Leave me alone!" Elora sobbed.

"_I'm afraid I cannot do that. As long as you have problems I will be here._"

"Why?"

"_Because I am your anxiety, and when there are problems I am never far behind._"

Elora felt her head clear again and she returned to sobbing. This was insane. Her anxiety had a voice and purple toffee had ripped two teeth out of her mouth. This was far too surreal to be reality. This had to be a dream or a trip or some other kind of pseudo-real state, but how could she get out of it?

She looked at herself in the mirror again, seeing the toffee wedged into her lower jaw. She could still taste it, but the sweetness she had come to expect from toffee had gone, replaced by an acrid flavour of iron and burnt sugar that tasted vile. Elora wanted to rid herself of the poisonous candy, but there was only one way it was going to come off. Dream or no dream she had to get the toffee out of her mouth before its presence drove her completely insane. Her sobs grew stronger as she reached into her mouth, fingers clasping the treat tightly. She took one last look at herself in the mirror before she tugged, seeing nothing but an utterly broken faun.

She felt a brief flash of pain as her lower teeth were ripped out, then she woke up. She didn't rise kicking and screaming or sit up with a start, but lay completely still like she hadn't suffered a nightmare at all, like it was just another morning. With a trembling hand she felt her teeth and found that all were present, but her fear wasn't completely relieved. She clambered out of bed and dove into the cupboard, withdrawing her Ace of Spades box and plucking a toffee out of it. Her nervous fingers fumbled with the wrapper, but soon it was open and inside Elora found a normal brown toffee.

"It was just a dream," she whispered to herself, a considerable amount of pressure lifting from her chest, "It was all just a nasty dream."

She collapsed back onto her bed and lay there for a while, letting her fear subside, but as the minutes passed she realised that it had no intention of going. Groaning, she sat up and rubbed her muddled head.

"Why am I like this?" she asked herself, and as if her head were responding to her question she remembered. In her dream her anxiety had been personified and had stated that when she had problems it was always there. Elora knew perfectly well she had a problem, a purple problem, a problem that had disappeared from her life when she should have taken steps to stop him from going. Slowly the pieces began to slot together, and as they fell into place the questions returned. _Why?_ _Why did you let him go? Why didn't you tell him? Why did you let him run away, never to return again? _Her mind questioned for the umpteenth time, and while Elora had spent the last few weeks ignoring them she knew it was time to provide an answer. She had a problem and with problems came anxiety, and there was only one way she could rid herself of it.

With newfound determination, she seated herself at her desk and grabbed a blank sheet of paper. With her favourite pen she wrote down his name, and then everything she had wanted to tell him. With every word came relief, her trapped anxiety finally finding an escape route. The release was heavenly, and not wanting to ruin this new sense of bliss she continued to write. Paragraph after paragraph of confession followed, each one relieving her pain and bringing a wider smile to her face. By the time she rounded off her letter she felt refreshed, the sheen of sweat that dampened her fur carrying all of her distress. There, she had done it, she had confessed to everything that had knotted her insides, and it felt unspeakably good.

She slid it into an envelope and wrote the recipient's address on the back, but as she stood up to take it to the Post Office she spotted her box of toffees lying open on the bed, their colourful wrappers attracting her eye. Smiling at the candies that just an hour ago she found repulsive, she plucked one and unravelled its wrapper before sliding it into her mouth. It tasted sweet.

And it didn't stick to her teeth.

* * *

**Alright, this needs some explaining.**

**A few nights back I had a dream. It wasn't really a nightmare, but in my dream I was eating a piece of toffee which was so sticky that it ripped my teeth out as I chewed. I wound up discussing that dream with my family a day or so later and they told me that your teeth falling out in a dream has a meaning behind it. Curious, I had a search on the web and I found that losing teeth in a dream is a sign of anxiety, though bizarrely my first thought wasn't 'What am I anxious about?' it was 'I can make a good story out of this!'**

**I kinda like writing stories that work off of themes rather than plot points. It mgiht be more difficult to understand but dissecting the different images is fun as a reader. (well, in my eyes it is :D)**


End file.
